What do Prince Prospero's reactions to the disease reveal about him?

In his reaction to the spread of the Red Death, Prince Prospero reveals a few things about his character.

• Prince Prospero gathers one thousand of his friends and flees to a walled-off abbey to hide from the fatal disease, showing his cowardice. In order to save his own life (and those of his friends), he abandons his people, leaving them to fend for themselves against the rampaging disease.


• When he and his friends seal the iron gate of the abbey shut, keeping others out and themselves in, that reveals his naivety. It is very childlike to think that you can protect yourself from a plague like the Red Death simply by sealing yourself in an abbey; no matter how many supplies they brought with them, they would eventually run out, and they would be forced to interact with the outside world in order to get more, so Prince Prospero did manage to avoid dealing with the illness for the time being, but not forever.


• He also shows that he is the kind of person who prefers to pretend that a problem does not exist; he brought entertainment with him into the abbey and through a masquerade in order to distract himself and his guests from the problems the outside world was facing.

Although not much about the prince's character is explicitly stated, we can still learn a lot about him based on how he reacts to the threat to his kingdom: he is a cowardly, naive man who prefers to ignore a problem and hope it simply goes away rather than dealing with it directly.